A Hearthstone Tale: Stray, the Cat of Luck
by Themis56
Summary: Originally intended as an anthology of Esper tales but later scrapped, this is the only story that got written due to my laziness. It's a story about Stray's origins and how cats are NOT to be trifled with.


Stray, Esper of Luck: The Cat Who Talked To People

A farmer walked down the main street of his little village early one morning, going out into the fields for to reap the harvest. The rest of the people had already gone about their business, most of them in the wheat crops ahead of the tardy farmer; only children bustled around in the dusty streets, the older ones looking after their brothers and sisters, their faces drawn and parched by the dust like the adults', the younger ones' equally dirty but not as fatigued.

Something crawling along the wall of the communal stables caught the farmer's attention, a smoky gray-black smudge on his peripheral vision. He looked closer as he walked by: the smudge turned out to be a little kitten, not more than a week old by his reckoning.

Normally, the farmer would not have taken any more notice; cats, farm cats, were as common in the community as the air itself. They were almost a way of life. Cats kept the village clear of vermin and disease, saving livestock and susceptible children--without felines, a farming community plunged into great peril. So the people kept, bred, and loved their cats, and there were many of them. What was one kitten amongst them all? But something compelled the farmer to go to the kitten, some deep primitive connection to the earth that modern people don't have. A better look was in order.

It was struggling towards an old milk pan left near the door of the stables, its pink, dry mouth emitting silent mews. Never was there anything so skinny or so wretched. The farmer could only come up with two reasons for this abandonment, for mother cats keep close watch over their young: the mother had either died or was simply not feeding her young.

He went around and looked into the stables. There, curled up on a bed of straw, was a fat mama cat, ashy gray, nursing five kits, purring warmly. So that was it. The farmer gave a sigh and shook his head. The kitten must have been pushed away, and it was certain the mother wasn't going to take it back. Even through all his life of toil, sweat, and chaff, he wasn't going to take any joy in what had to be done. He went back around, lifting the kitten up none-too-gently by its back fur, and started towards the main well. He had no knife handy, nor did he have the stomach to wring the poor thing's neck.

Children loved to play around the main well. Though the sun had only just begun to peek over the flat horizon, a good sized crowd of dusty-haired, grubby-faced whelps had already assembled in their play, which consisted mainly of drawing things in the dirt before scooping up handfuls and feeding it to the younger ones--anything to make the belly feel full. But when the farmer came, they drew off onto either side of him in reverence, for he was big and they were small. Silently, fingers in their mouths, sucking furiously in a vain attempt to grasp the situation, they watched as the big man drew up a bucket. He held the kitten over the wooden rim, ready to let it take its last, deep, fatal plunge, and it would be done ever so quickly...

"Don't kill it! Please, please, don't!"

A child, taller than most, who had been observing from one of the house porches, came running up. The farmer glared, chagrined at her audacity.

"I've gotta, little girl. This kitten ain't long for this world nohow. It's mama won't let it nurse."

"I'll take care of it," the girl pleaded, dirty hands drawn forth in country supplication. "I promise I will! It's too small and cute to die."

"Listen here," the farmer said, "That's the way things is. A mama cat don't not nurse her kit unless she got good reason. It's probably sick. She knows what she's doing. When you get older--"

"That's what they always say," the girl cried, tears threatening to leak out from her eyes, closed shut in rebellion, "but I'll take care of it. It won't be no skin off your back. Please, may I have it?"

The rays of the dawn sun twinkled out a warning; the farmer glanced up almost in a state of panic. Every second of fine weather dripped away, seconds which could be used in harvesting just one more stalk of wheat to ward of against winter hunger. And here he was haggling over a kitten no bigger than a cotton puff!

"Fine, fine, take it," he grunted, thrusting the baby cat into the girl's face, and he hurried out to the fields.

Now, the kitten had understood all that had just gone on. It was hardly a common animal. No matter if it was too weakened by hunger and exposure and its own young ignorance to give its thoughts tongue--it had been deeply outraged to have been manhandled by some stomping elephant and then nearly drowned. Now it found itself and its future alive only by the charity of some smudge-haired girl. Dignity could only stretch so far for a feline. The kitten cracked open a gray-green snaky eye and began to try and buck out of her soft hands, twirling its hindquarters and tail like a whirligig. But the girl only smiled, clasped her writhing foundling to her chest, and skipped off to find some milk and a baby's feeding spoon.

For the proceeding two weeks, the kitten was subjected to every sort of indignity and disgrace by the denizens of its new home. The girl who fancied herself its keeper was decent enough despite her insufferably ill-timed cuddles and her rough strokes the wrong way against smoky fur, but she had several younger siblings who became the bane of the kitten's existence. They stuffed it into birdhouses; they shoved its little head through napkin rings which could only be removed via hacksaw; they swung it in circles around and around by its tail. Our kitten could only come to one conclusion: perhaps being drowned might have been the better option. Yet it refrained from making a break over the wall and stayed with its tormentors, for it still needed milk to live, and at least the humans gave it plenty of that.

Then one day the kitten began to talk.

Most animals in that strange time at the War of the Magi's end did _not _speak, just as in ours; aside from being physically impossible, it was a very crude manner of communication, hardly worth even responding to; but this by no means an ordinary kitten, and the stimulus that brought froth its speech was persuasive indeed.

Late one evening, when the sky is dark but no stars are out yet, the girl sat in the corner of the house's attic. She often went here so she could spend some time alone in the sparse minutes between coming in from the fields and her bedtime, to get away from her brothers and sisters. Her back was slumped against the wall, her face begrimed and looking like an adult's, and in one arm crook aching from the day's chores she cradled her kitten, having unearthed it from hiding in a straw tick.

"You know," she murmured, "you need a name. A kitty like you needs a name. Hmmm...how about I call you Smoky? Or maybe Blacky? Or Mittens? Or," she mused, taking note of the kitten's one white paw, "I'll call you Socksie..."

It was just too much. Desperate times called for similar measures, and the kitten had just about all it could take of this abuse. It cracked open an eye.

"_Don't you even think about calling me that."_

Too late the little cat realized that it may have done something imprudent. But did the girl drop her baggage and scream about devils and sorcery? No. Did she try to dissect the kitten to see how it could talk? No. Did she put the cat in a cage and start charging fifty cents a gander? No. For the girl was of that special age, that transitive state where a child realizes that most inhuman creatures do not speak in words but is still young and fanciful enough to still believe exceptions to be highly probable; and in the reign of the Goddesses and their Espers, magic was definitely a force to be considered, though the girl did not fear magic, unlike her fellow townsfolk. So, when the kitten spoke, she blinked once or twice and then answered back, as it seemed the polite thing to do.

"Then what do you want to be called?"

"Who ever said I wanted to be called anything? I don't need a name, especially from lower life forms like you."

Its listener was not put off; children can be quite tenacious. "Well, I can't just be calling you 'cat' all my life, it's too confusing. We have lots of cats here."

"I know," came the rather acerbic-tongued reply.

"_You _can choose what you want to be called," she generously offered. "Didn't your mama or brothers and sisters call you anything?"

"Yes, they did."

"What was it?"

"All they ever called me was 'Stray.'"

"Stray?"

The kitten purred in reinforcing assurance. "Prrr. Yes. They didn't exactly want me around, so they came up with the nastiest label they could think of."

"Why were they so mean to you?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Stray's tail squirmed in a fit of aggravated pique. Then it looked very thoughtful. "I can't say I miss them much, really. They were a sterile, boring lot. All they cared about was hygiene and food and lording over all the cows and horses in that damned stable. I like to think there's more to life than that. I'll say this for you, you're a little better company, even if you can't give a proper ear-scratching worth jack whoop."

Sensing a compliment of some sort, the girl brightened and said: "Then I'll call you Stray. Do you like that?"

"Whatever suits you."

"Are you _my _kitten now? I have named you, you know."

Stray bristled slightly at this: "I am not yours. I am my own." At the sight of her face falling, he decided to amend the last statement by saying, "But I'm nobody else's either. Here's as good as any place else. Don't ask me to do any special tricks for you or your accursed siblings, though, or I'll scratch your eyes out. Keep milk in the saucers and mice in the barn, and I'll stay."

Happy in the haze of her exhaustion, the girl laughed lightly and tossed the kitten up in the air before giving it a kiss on the nose. Much to its disgust.

From thence onward, Stray resigned itself to living the life of a simple farm cat. It spent the majority of its hours in the family's barn or at the edge of the fields, perpetually on the hunt for the skitterish wild mice (plump and filling but bitter to taste); when not chasing vermin, Stray bundled up in the hay-loft for a siesta or went off to the kitchen for a saucer of cream. When night cast all the bright, hot wheat in a ghostly pallor, Stray went inside the house with the family, often carried in the girl's arms. She would spend her last waking time in front of the hearth or in the attic's dusty solitude cradling her cat or stroking it as it lay on her lap. 

She would speak to Stray too at these times; her words weren't particularly enlightening and she had no sense of rhetoric to embellish her plain subjects, but Stray did not mind—her low voice was a comfort to it, like the purring of a mother cat, and she never condescended or lisped in baby-talk. She addressed the cat as an intellectual equal, if not a superior. "You should come with me to school someday, Stray, we have these books about ancient animals with really neat pictures in them—I reckon you could find a relative or two in there," or "Papa fell asleep next to the tree when he couldn't hold his liquor today… if you'd stopped by and yowled in his ear, that would've sobered him up."

Stray rarely had much to say in response to such anecdotes, but sometimes it deigned to speak a few words, which never failed to please her. She liked it when her cat talked. Mostly because she knew it would never talk to anybody else except her.

After the even-tide conversation, the girl then retired to bed; Stray followed behind and curled up in a tight loop on her chest when she had settled down on her scratchy corn-husk mattress and ragged quilt, rising and falling with her deep breathing.

If the rest of the girl's family suspected that their new cat acted with a little more arrogance than most others, if they had the slightest hunch that the cat's eyes gleamed brighter than was normal, they were too ignorant to follow through on intuition and too caught up in their own daily problems to give it much thought. A cat was only a cat, no matter how uppity it acted.

The girl bounced Stray on her scratched knees, much to its distress—she usually didn't have much energy in the evenings, and at times like these the cat yearned for routine with a passion.

"I had to go to school today," she said. "Mama said that the chores were easy now, and that I couldn't get through life just knowin' how to bundle hay and bake pie. Papa threw a fit, but Mama kicked him, so he made me go."

"An outrage, unquestionably."

"Oh, it wasn't so bad after all, but it's mighty tryin'. I know my letters and numbers well enough, but the things they're doin' out at the schoolhouse beat all else. We learned about a place called Thama today. Now what can I do with learnin' about Thama when I'm in the fields?"

"Impress your brothers and sisters with your wisdom, I expect."

"Seems about all it's good for."

Stray rolled onto its back and curled out its paws luxuriously. "No wonder you're in good spirits tonight. You didn't have to look after your hell-born siblings today."

"You still sore about them tying you up and throwing you into the washtub?"

"You tell me."

The girl opened her mouth to laugh and answer; but she suddenly froze. Her eyes grew wide and transfixed themselves on a point seemingly far away. Craning its head, Stray looked to where her eyes directed.

A sandy-blonde head was sticking up from the attic's trap door, small blue eyes taking up half the face.

"Mommmmmmmaaaaaaaa!"

The child ducked down and began screeching like doomsday was after him. After he had roused the house, Stray could hear the frantic footfalls pound out the door.

Skin gleaming bone white in the scanty light, the girl slammed the trap door shut and crawled into the corner, stroking the cat's fur over and over and murmuring in a broken tongue. She never knew what would happen if her family or the town got word about Stray's talents, but she didn't expect she'd ever be this scared when it happened.

In a small village word flies around quickly, as quick as fire eating sagebrush. And this was a period in time when the War of the Magi was drawing to a close and more cynical people began to question whether magic existed at all, but the stories of Esper attacks in the night, of terrible twisting powers and raging blazes were still whispered to little children, and people seemed to go crazy with fear whenever magic was mentioned in a conversation for more than thirty seconds. People heard about the cat, and they were determined to smash it, as they did anything that threatened them. 

After a long silence, the girl's mother, face drawn, poked her head up into the attic loft.

"Sweetie," she whispered, "Papa wants you to come downstairs. There's a little trouble, and he wants to know that everyone's here."

Nodding mutely, the girl scooped her cat up into her arms. She had it in a death grip, and following several violent struggles Stray knew that the damned fool would not let it go. Human compulsion was lost to feline logic.

The girl came down into the front room; her father stood in the doorway, arms across the frame. Flickering red light flowed in from under his wide arms, and the girl, foolishly curious, stood next to him to look out. A small mob of farmers and the more hard-nosed wives fanned out on the rickety front porch which sagged in protestation under the great weight--pitchforks, butcher knives, and every other crude instrument of agricultural battle shone dully in the light of a few knotty torches.

"You'd do well to hand over the cat," one man was saying to the father, but at the girl's arrival the voice dropped away.

"There it is," a hysteric woman's voice shrieked out, "the beast!" The girl clutched Stray closer to her breast trembling with both numb fear and a terrible fury. She inched towards her parents who retreated as much ground from their daughter as she gained.

"Please, dear," the mother cried throughout a litany of choking sobs, "let that thing go! It has bewitched you! Come to your senses!"

"For Goddess' sake, give it to them," the father shouted. The girl stood rigid and unyielding, but her eyes were soft with a resolve, her sun-maculated skin stony in the waning light. She enfolded her unmoving pet more tightly in their embrace.

As for the feline, to say that it wasn't terrified would be foolish, but through its fright it kept its head. It even allowed a bit of a mental sneer as it took stock of its situation. Stray knew well that outrunning and dodging away from these fools would be no great feat. A cat is nigh impossible to catch if it doesn't want to be caught. But to do that...Well, Stray felt..._hollow_ at the thought of leaving the girl. No longer to be cradled in front of a burning fire, to have her talk of many things and not use the baby lingo that most pets are subjected to, to never be stroked by those callused fingers again even if it was in the wrong direction...O, that would be hard to endure!

But nothing else remained but leaving--death didn't make for many opportunities to get scratched either. The girl had to be left behind.

Stray lifted its head for one last eye-lock with the girl, but her face was turned to the posse and did not see. The cat then launched itself out of her arms and skittered right into the midst of the heavy clogs and boots. A collective scream burst out in hideous, high-pitched force.

"Quickly! There it goes!"

"Bash its head in!"

"Oh, gods, kill it, kill it!"

Feet stomped. Skirts flew up to the knees. Men bellowed. Women squealed. Blunt, heavy tools of the field swung down in a hail. All smashed into a single nucleus of motion, yet movement was eerily slow as in all crises. And Stray cheated them all. It dodged through the sluggish chaotic sea and emerged at the end of the crowd while everyone was busy working themselves into a blood frenzy. One last look at the girl and her family, and then it scampered off at full speed.

But see what happened!

In the grand confusion, someone snatched up a smooth, polished stone half-buried in the dusty street and hurled it with abandon. The stone flew in an arbitrary direction. And it smashed home right in the middle of the girl's forehead.

Her eyes grew wide at the impact, then rolled up to the whites as she crumpled in a jerking heap, mouth slack, blood seeping down the sides of her nose. The mother shrieked and wept, drowning out even the crowd's commotion with her keening. The townspeople drew into silence as they beheld the father carry his daughter away into the house. Human blood had not been the intent, but it was satisfactory in driving away the frenzy with its feeling of unjust accomplishment. People slunk away, men grumbling heavily to themselves and women preparing to lavish home-cooked meals on the family in recompense.

From even its distance, Stray had heard the crack of the rock hitting bone; it had overridden the adrenaline impulse to flee and looked back. It immediately wished it hadn't. Once it saw the blood, it had wanted to run back, lick away the blood with a rough and healing tongue. Yet to what purpose? No, best to continue on. Nothing could be helped.

The cat traveled out from the hamlet into a thick wood, where it curled up in a tree branch, paws tucked under, tail wrapped like a noose around its body. Crimson rivulets on frayed bone white danced through its tightly slitted eyes, past the filmy third eyelid, and rolling pupils. The smoky body shook.

In the visions' midst, an idea took shape. Deep down in the primordial self that lay beneath instinct, Stray remembered the existence of three great and terrible Goddesses, rulers of magic and life-essence. They had been the guardians of all nature before they had gone mad with jealousy for one another and declared divine war. And it remembered that somewhere in these woods was a holy place favored by Goddess, most gracious of the trinity. Yes, Stray decided, it would go to this woodsy sanctuary, beseech the deity to set things aright, appeal to her mercy. 

Yes.

Upon the following day, Stray stripped itself to the very core, disengaging instinct, senses, thought, and focusing only upon the divine shadowy path that lay past petty flesh. A weak thread spanned into the cat's being and it followed, the line growing every more taught and substantial, thrumming and electric. 

__

O follow follow follow.

Through thicket and thorn.

Past clear, thin brooks, winding tails into a crown.

Go over the dried leaf and pine needle.

Trek past all things earthy and familiar.

Hear no birds sing, no insects hum, no wind breeze.

Follow till you find the source of the power, where the Goddess dwells.

O, follow follow follow.

Stray found itself at the edge of a limpid pool of clearest water, a lake with no scum on the top, no water bugs skating, no reeds bending to catch their reflections. Only bubbling liquid, pure as to see through eternity, charged in power. The cat stretched out its forepaws in appeal.

Goddess did not base whether she answered a summons or not on the wishes or emotions of her suppliant; rather, she judged her response on outer appearance. And when she saw a small gray-black feline calling out for her aid, she was instantly intrigued and amused. Rare did she receive such a visitor as this! So she answered, channeling her essence through the pristine water, snaking the liquid into tendrils, forcing them up and swirling faster and faster until energy formed into flesh. Goddess whirled around for a few turns more, bright hair flashing on smooth shoulders, then gradually slowed down her dance. She looked down at the cat, hands on her bare hips.

"How comes it that something such as you, my dear, appeals to me? Human beings are my usual clients."

"Goddess, I come to you to ask for your aid."

"Oh?"

"Yes," Stray murmured, not daring to look up, all feline pride cast down in her presence. "There is a girl that has been hurt badly, very badly. I am partially to blame for her condition. I seek to make amends. Would you heal her?"

The goddess arched one eyebrow. Stray flinched under her reproachful gaze.

"Please."

"You think highly of yourself, don't you?" came the low response; Stray felt as if the voice was licking it with a tongue as rough and sensuous as its own. "Then again, such animals like are you hard to come by. Tell me first, kitty, how can you even speak, let alone think--I assume you do."  
"Lady, I have been able to think as long as I've been born. I learned how to speak from being in contact with humans."

"Dull company for you, no doubt."

"For the most part."

Goddess brushed a slender finger over her lips, now pursed tight. Was this creature (no matter how amusing) sent as a spy by one of her wretched sisters, Doom or Poltergeist? The bitches! Goddess grew weary of their squabble. Yet another perusal of her guest made her dismiss the thought--no cat would ever allow itself to be treated so. It would be satisfying to be the first. Still...

"Odd, odd, very odd," she mulled out loud. "You are a creature of a different kind, to be sure. I can feel no magic from you, yet you speak to me. Some anomaly of nature...the tiniest spark of the supernatural wove its way into you by some freak accident, I am guessing. I hardly know what to make of you. An animal like you is dangerous. I can't have you running about on this world, no, I cannot. The proper thing to do would to be rid of you, but you are so infernally adorable I can't bring myself to lift a hand against you."

Stray shuddered again; it desperately wished the goddess would stop hypothesizing. All it had wanted to do was to ask for help.

"Listen you well," her voice cut through the cat's anxiety. "I shall heal this girl for you. In return, you shall enter my service as an Esper."

"An Esper?"

"Yes. But I won't send you into battle, my precocious kitty, I have enough warriors to fend off anything my sisters send against me. I am lonely for some companionship, some entertainment, and you seem the perfect solution. Become my kitty. I shall give you powers and great magic."

"What will happen to me if I agree?" Stray asked, unable to conceal the wavering trepidation in its voice. This being was overwhelming, her divinity a great sweeping aura full of tricks and the scent of sex and all things that were pleasurable but not chaste nor pure.

"If you are a good kitty, you'll be showered with love. I do not wish to be without a companion for eternity. My only demand is for your company and to keep me entertained--not a great strain for you."

Goddess leaned over and scooped the cat up into her soft arms, adroit fingers delicately stroking fur in the right way, pressing all the right places, her scent enveloping all reason. The girl had never been this perfect. Stray opened its mouth in a silent peep, reveling in the glory.

"I'll do it," it rasped when it had regained its voice through the euphoria. Goddess laughed, placed a kiss on its head, and sat down on the lake lip, shifting her pet into her lap.

"First we stretch out those legs," she said, tugging on Stray's feet; they lengthened and extended as if they were putty, almost like human legs. "Then we crick that spine." She pushed down on the lower back, working muscle, bone, and tendon like clay. "Finally, we make you a little bigger. You're a bit small for my tastes." And she did just that; the once small cat was the size of a Great Dane dog.

Now Stray detected a problem. With its back legs so out of proportion, how was it supposed to walk?

"Go ahead, jump down," Goddess urged gently. "You'll be surprised."

The cat did as bidden; it found that it could walk easily around on its hind legs like a human as if it had been doing so its whole life. Stray wasn't sure this was preferable; going on all fours was more natural.

Goddess clapped her hands together in laughter. "Oh, how precious! That's adorable! Wait, I have one last thing to do."

A pair of red leather boots appeared in her shapely marble white hands like blood on snow. "Come, put on your shoes, take the magic, prepare for a new life! These have a special magic in them; they will give you your power."

Stray slipped his new feet within the boots' confines and he felt a surge of raw magic tingle its way up the supple cat spine. The feeling was pleasant thought it burned at the edges. The things in the cat's vision glittered in a fresh light. It spoke to the goddess: "I thank you for all of these things. Is the girl healed?"

"She is now," Goddess said, waving her hand. One wave, that was all it took. There was something lacking in that, Stray couldn't resist thinking, it shouldn't have been so easy.

"May I go see her?"

"Yes you may, but only for a little while. I am very lonely. I want us to get to know each other well very soon. Come back to me as soon as you've finished your business." Goddess then fell back in a graceful swan dive in the lake's water, dissolving away in a foamy mass of sparkles and bubbles, leaving her Esper to linger on the shore before it, too, took to the air and vanished away.

In an instant, Stray the Esper came to the girl--she was lying on her parents' bed, shrouded in blankets, her forehead bound in rough and dusty bandages. It leaned in close to nuzzle her nose, but she gave no response to its existence even though her eyes were open. Frowning as only a cat could in puzzlement as to her indifference, Stray gently pulled away the bandage with its teeth: a long ugly scar stretched on her brow, but the wound had healed, and she lived. Goddess did not fail her promise.

"Foolish girl, don't you know me?" Stray demanded, hoping the sound of its voice would rouse her into recognition. The eyes were blank and empty.

Ears pricking up at the sound of people approaching, Stray shrunk back into the corner shadows. The girl's mother and a man carrying a black case, a doctor if Stray knew one, entered the room; a cry of astonishment broke the heavy, hot air as the mother pointed at the scar where only minutes before a great gaping hole of cracked bone had been.

"The gods have done this," she cried in ecstasy.

"Yes, it can't be none else," the doctor breathed reverently.

The mother bent over her daughter, eyes gleaming. "Oh, sweetie, sweetie, how do you feel? Can you get up? Can you talk?...Sweetie? Are you feeling any better? Oh, doctor, why won't she speak to me? All she's doing is just looking at me!"

"I was afraid something like this may have happened. Shouldn't have hoped for so much anyway. You see, ma'am, when a person gets hit like she was in the head...sometimes they don't come out of it exactly right. They forget things, they don't speak. Her brains must have been rattled pretty bad. You might have to teach her everything all over again--"

Stray did not linger to hear the rest of the conversation, fading through the wall and moving out into the street, casting an invisibility charm to keep hidden from curious eyes. 

After disappearing, the girl turned her eyes to the wall and mumbled with a sleepy, incoherent smile: "Kitty."

But Stray did not hear this. Rather, it stalked throughout the little village, a great wrath in its heart, a mindless, throbbing sense of great injustice and rage at somehow being tricked roiling in every fiber of its being. It turned its glinting, vicious eyes and saw an open barn door; looking in, Stray watched a big, lumbering farmer with a large jawbone hard at work pitching hay, a farmer that was recognized as having been in the crowd that had surrounded the girl's house on _that _day. A small lantern gave off its paltry illumination from the far wall, as dusk was coming on fast.

Stray focused burning eyes upon the lantern. Oh, what a pity it would be if somehow that little lantern just happened to fall off from its nail and roll into the hay, transforming its candle into a raging bonfire! What a bad stroke of luck that would be! This man had help hurt the, _its_, little girl--

_Fall off. Fall off. Come on, fall off. Burn! Burn! He deserves no less for what he did to me. _These words repeated themselves over and over again and again, burning in the Cat-Esper's brain, flowing through the surge of hate and shaking the rusty lantern ever so quietly on its nail.

_Tip over. _And that's exactly what the lantern did. The flame burned with a heat too intense to be its own, and the barn was enveloped in flames within a minute. Stray backed away from the heat and cracked a devious grin; it broke the invisibility spell for only a second, so that a few sharp-eyed or drunk people in the ring that had gathered would think that they had seen a smoky-gray cat in boots grinning near the scene as if admiring its own handiwork. Then it vanished again and moved on to go back to its new mistress. 

For now Stray was the Esper of Luck, the Cat who spins both fortune and disaster between its paws, and it pleased him greatly to play with the humans thus. And after Goddess was turned into stone, Stray out of all the Espers without leadership did not frequent the world behind the Sealed Gate. It was having too much fun with its job--people feared it because every time a great disaster happened for no apparent reason at all, a great Cat God would make its presence known, but people also loved it because the Esper gave fame and fortune too, though not quite as regularly. It was truly glorious sport.

Because in a cat's eyes, luck and justice are equal and the same.

THE END


End file.
